John Lennon biography

With Yoko Ono

On 7 November 1966 he met Japanese artist Yoko Ono at the Indica gallery in London, where she was preparing a conceptual art show. They began a relationship in May 1968, and Cynthia filed for divorce on the grounds of infidelity later that year.

Lennon and Ono began a series of peace protests against the Vietnam war. Lennon returned his MBE to the Queen in 1969, stating: "Your Majesty, I am returning this in protest against Britain's involvement in the Nigeria-Biafra thing, against our support of America in Vietnam, and against Cold Turkey slipping down the charts. With love. John Lennon of Bag."

The couple married in Gibraltar in March 1969, and spent their honeymoon in Amsterdam staging a 'Bed-in' for peace in the Hilton hotel. The period was documented by Lennon in The Beatles' song The Ballad Of John And Yoko. In April 1969, Lennon changed his name to John Ono Lennon on the roof of Apple.

The Beatles disintegrated in 1969. Lennon left the group in September, but agreed not to announce it while the band were renegotiating their recording contract. When McCartney declared that he had left the group in April 1970, Lennon's reaction was "Jesus Christ! He gets all the credit for it!" He later told Rolling Stone magazine: "I was a fool not to do what Paul did, which was use it to sell a record."

Although Lennon harboured some bitterness towards his former bandmates, he was later quoted as saying "I still love those guys. The Beatles are over, but John, Paul, George and Ringo go on."

In 1970 he released the John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band album, his most powerful solo release, and followed it up by the enormously popular Imagine. Both were produced by Phil Spector, who Lennon collaborated with several times during the 1970s.

Lennon left the UK for New York in August 1971, never to return. Several solo singles and albums followed, of varying quality, and Lennon increasingly became involved in radical politics.

His marriage to Yoko Ono had become strained by 1973, and in November they separated. Lennon embarked on what he later called his "lost weekend" for 18 months, in the company of new partner May Pang and a series of drinking companions including Harry Nilsson and Ringo Starr.

Ono and Lennon reconciled in November 1974 following his appearance at Elton John's Thanksgiving concert at Madison Square Garden. He eventually returned to live with her once more at their apartment in the Dakota building, New York City, on 31 January 1975.

The lost weekend was replaced by Lennon's period of house-husbandry. His son Sean Ono Lennon was born on 9 October 1975 - Lennon's 35th birthday - and John withdrew from the music business to raise him.

He re-emerged in November 1980 with the release of Double Fantasy, a split album with half the songs recorded by Yoko Ono.

Following its release Lennon began planning a follow-up, Milk And Honey. However, as he and Ono returned from a recording session on the night of 8 December 1980, he was shot by in front of the Dakota building by Mark David Chapman. Earlier that day Lennon had autographed a copy of Double Fantasy for the gunman.

Lennon was pronounced dead on arrival at 11.15pm. The following day Yoko Ono issued a statement, which read:

There is no funeral for John. John loved and prayed for the human race. Please pray the same for him. Love, Yoko and Sean.

–The increasing tension. For example I Should Have Known Better. Before Lennon, all pop music structure was AABA, where the tension decreased in the middle part B. But with Lennon the tension from the verse continued in the middle part. Besides that, in this song it is not only a key change in the transition to the middle part, it is even a little key change in it. The increasing tension was what first characterized The Beatles. The first single where the verse lacked this increasing tension was Can´t Buy Me Love. (But the chorus is OK). I didn´t know then it was a McCartney composition. – Other ways of increase the tension by Lennon is to pack together several little songs. Happiness Is A Warm Gun consists of three or four songs, and Bring On The Lucie consists of three songs. –All You Need Is Love has another way: First talking, then repeating half singing, then singing, and finally the climax in chorus.
–The melody does not changes, but the background. For example in Strawberry Fields Forever and in Julia the singing melody uses the same notes, but instead the accompaniment changes! Listen to Puccini. He got tired of his sang melodies in Boheme and in Tosca he composed a lot where the sang melodies are often on the same notes, but the background changes instead. The effect can be stronger.
–Octave Leap. For example, in the middle part of Please Please Me, Lennon makes an octave run in “…it´s so hard to reason with YOU…”, the climax of the song. George Martin didn´t understand the quality in that. In his orchestration of it in Off The Beatle Track, Martin excludes the octave, the most important bit of the song!
–Verse and resolve. Typical for Lennon is a melody followed by a resolve, for example in No Reply “…I saw the light!”…and in Girl “girl! girl!…”. Lennon said that “a good song must have climax and resolve”.
–Only one chord. In Tomorrow Never Knows there is only one chord, or bass note, an innovation in pop music. In the Middle Ages it was common with that bordun note, an unchanged bass note. When Lennon played the song the first time for George Martin, Martin didn´t like it.
–Whole-tone scale. Most scales have both whole step and half steps between the notes in an octave. In the verse in Norwegian Wood, there is most whole steps, and that´s like the impressionists, for example Debussy. It sounds very clean.
–Church Modes. A Hard Day´s Night is written in the mixolydian mode, an ancient vocal scale, preserved in British, Irish and American folk song. –If you play the beginning of Please Please Me slowly, you can hear the similarities with the Westminster bells ringing. When Lennon was a little boy, he loved visiting the divine services. Afterwards he used to improvise anthem music. Westminster bells could unconsciously have inspired him to the beginning of Please Please Me. There is also anthem music in the beginning of All You Need Is Love: “love love love…”.
–The lamentation second. A little half step up in the scale. And that´s to indicate a pain. In All You Need Is Love Lennon sings the refrain twice unchanged and then suddenly the third time, rises a little, a very expressive and important step up. That step up started in the baroque epoch, and was called The lamentation second. When Lennon played it the first time to George Martin, Martin didn´t like it. He leaned towards McCartney and muttered: “It´s certainly repetitive”.
–From darkness to light. Happiness Is a Warm Gun starts with a little melancholy, and ends with enthusiasm.—In the middle part of I Am The Walrus the darkness switches over to light: “sitting in an English garden…”. And the transition from the chaos and darkness in Revolution 9 to the light in Good Night. That is very typical in Wagner´s music. I think that temperamentally the two were similar. And I think Wagner would have loved the arrangement in Glass Onion.
–Suggestive and hypnotic music. With small intervals between the notes in combination with some dissonance chord, Lennon can create a suggestive and hypnotic feeling in for example Across The Universe. It is more like Wagner than pop music.
–Few notes. With few, but effective notes, Lennon can create more feeling than McCartney with all his notes, for example in If I Fell and Love.
–A melody sang three times, in succession, with just a little change every time. When you hear it you can get frustrated or desperate not getting out from the melody. That we have in the middle part in I Call Your Name and in the middle part in And Your Bird Can Sing. And at the same time the melodies are stick together with a countermelody at the guitar. Rather hypnotic

Live and let live. This man is happy writing what he wrote, and his chosen subject was a brilliant choice: the musical genius and founder of the Beatles, John Lennon. YOU are the one who needs to get his own life.

All I can say is that it still breaks my heart to know John is no longer here. I was 17 when he was senselessly murdered. I can still remember it like it was yesterday. John is the best musician ever, sadly we only got a small sample of his work. He is so greatly missed by so many. We will always have you in our hearts and mind through your creativity. I so glad you were with us as long as you were.

I read some where that the night that John got shot Yoko said to the doctors or the news reporters that she didn’t want to announce his death on the tv right away because she said Sean was in front of it.

He was controversial yet spiritual. Many never understood him. People misunderstood his words. He would use power of communication to read people. This is partly what resulted to his shooting. He knew folks hated him anyway.

John was a true genius. However his most blatant act of stupidity was when he took up with Yoko. I still blame her for being one of the primary reasons for him wanting to leave the Beatles. It’s still a head scratcher to me why he was attracted to her. She had no real talent, she sang like a cat getting it’s tail pulled, her looks were a 2 on a scale of 1-10, and she was dumb as a stump. I will always believe that she somehow brainwashed him.

Well, Ono was from a wealthy family and as for her being all those great things you have mentioned….you are probably righ…Japan has the worst bands ever becoming famous just because Japanese tend to like crappy music.

Whatever or whoever Yoko might be, we should respect her simply because John respected her, and she probably saved him from dying of an OD in 69/70. However, her role in the murder is equivocal, and she couldn’t save him from Ronald Reagan’s minions. I agree with Paul, the assassin’s name should be forgotten, he was just a tool.

John Lennon was probably the most brilliant and prolific music composer of the 20th century. With that brilliance comes a certain inability to relate much as Edison, Tesla and Einstein had difficulty relating. They all shared the commonality of being misunderstood. The man was genius and should there be any doubt look at what he has written and its social impact. He and the rest of the Beatles changed the face of music forever.

I like John Lennon, but the most brilliant and prolific composer of the 20th century is probably George Gershwin (discounting classical music) and I would rank Cole Porter, Bob Dylan, and several others above John Lennon.

Dear Warptek, John had been an fervent supporter of Jimi Carter back in 1976., He had been an undesirable alien in the US of A from 1972 to 1975, when he eventually was granted his green card. He had won…too easily against a disgraced Nixon. In the meantime, John had nothing to fear from Carter’s team. But in November 1980, two things happened almost at the same time : The election of Ronald Reagan and John’s own return to the forefront of the pop*rock scene. You know what happened.
Now, if you say politics are a forbidden subject here, we should never talk about John at all! I hate politics, but I’m convinced ( Like Sean ) that John Lennon’s assassination was a political one.

I noticed a mistake and would like to correct it politely.
John’s first school was actually Mosspits County Primary School. He was expelled in 1946 for misbehaviour and then enrolled in Dovedale Road Primary School. My source is ‘An Intimate Day by Day History’ by Barry Miles.

Can buy me love

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